This is NOT Iguazu!

Altough it may look and sound the same, on a much smaller scale, it is instead the faucet at El Calafate airport where I spent most of my day on Friday. My airline had the great idea to go on strike that day. And the icing on the cake was the cancelation of my morning flight to Buenos Aires. Drama was everywhere, women crying (sorry didn´t spot any guys), and one girl was hyperventilating. That silenced the whole crowd around her very quick. But we suspect she faked it to get attention and get bumped up on the waiting list that existed at the time. Airline representatives went from speaking English fluently one sec, to having a brain fart the next and claiming they did not speak english. Of course they make sure to tell you that in perfect English. Calling the airlines directly was useless. The recording would tell you to wait (after going through a maze of options of course), and then you´d get promptly disconnected. The scientist in me tried it a few times to ensure consistency in this procedure.
You couldn´t sit at a table in the airport unless you bought a beverage or food of some sort. Oh and using a public phone is nearly impossible as it requires coins. The stores at the airport don´t like to part from their coins so it was a treasure hunt just to get these metallic things. But one positive outcome to this whole mess was that I got reunited with Liang and Susan who were also affected by the strike.
To make a long story short, the airline shuttle me back into town and put me up in a 4 star hotel in El Calafate. While there I ran into these two characters who were standing in line at the Aerolineas Argentinas counter downtown to figure out their flights. Again I´m amazed of how easy it is to run into anyone in this country. The timing is just incredible. We managed to spend a few hours together until I was wisked away back to the airport (the strike had only lasted for 8 hours) to catch a later flight (12 hours late mind you). Oh and of course by that time I had missed my connection to Iguazu.
El Calafate´s airport was total chaos. It was as if all the tourists in town had decided to converge in this small hallway to catch the remaining flights of the day. A small group of passengers and I united together as a group to grab the last few seats out that day.
In the end, I arrived at 1:30am into Buenos Aires whereI spent the night on the marble floor of the airport holding dearly to all my posessions. I like to sleep in a hard bed but this was a bit over the top. I got up at 4 am to be the first at the ticket counter to get a new one issued for Iguazu. Luck was finally on my side and I got a flight out of Buenos Aires to Iguazu.